Rules:
- Rewatches allowed.
- A feature film (at least 40 min) counts as one entry.
- A total of 60 minutes of short films count as one entry.
- For mini-series, the usual 40/60 rules apply.
- We'll follow the "significant contribution" rule - the Iberian country must have made a significant enough contribution to the film to count for this challenge. Interpret as you may.

Stats & Formatting:
- Title (year, Country) is the preferred format [please include the country so I don't have to look it up]
- For TV episodes, please use "Series Title: Episode Title" as the title
- New posts are preferred over edited posts
- I'll be tracking years and countries with this challenge

Very intense first 30 minutes, less enticing second 30 minutes (waiting him for him to catch up) and terrific final 30 minutes with some unexpected plot turns = a fairly solid recommendation overall. I probably I would have enjoyed this more had I not already seen a certain film from 2009 beginning with the letter T and a certain film from 2014 beginning with the letter P, but still this holds its own quite well.

In. Don't know how much I'll watch - probably not much more than running through the Almodovars I haven't seen, and some Spanish horror. Maybe some Oliveira on the Portuguese side. Will be happy to get to 10 and ecstatic to hit 20 on this one.

This true-story thriller benefits from an excellent sound design with accentuated audio effects, realistic makeup scars, and the tsunami itself is captured well. The decision to use the tsunami as a catalyst for an angry teen to appreciate his parents and brothers never feels right though; same goes for the filmmakers' decision to focus on the impact on tourists in Thailand to the exclusion of the locals. On the plus side, Tom Holland tries his best as the young lad searching for his father and brothers while tending to his hurt mother.

This horror film benefits from great local Spanish scenery, luscious camerawork and some truly brutal deaths, but does not do so well though juggling its mishmash of themes and ideas. There is a brother and his sister who have incestuous relations, but this is hardly fleshed out. There is also potential to how our heroine is unable to convince anybody else that murders are taking place since the corpses keep vanishing, yet it never makes sense that nobody cares that their friends cannot be found and the last person who saw them reckons that they were killed.

Best described as Phone Booth with a piano, this Spanish thriller takes a ludicrous premise and makes it works. There is not quite enough material for a full feature length film, and the first 25 minutes before the horror/thrills begin could have been massively shortened. The sniper's motives also make one wonder if his plan is the most logical way to achieve his goals. And yet, the film is rivetingly shot and edited, capturing both the suspense of the plot as well as the protagonists's fear and anxieties; it's an interesting study of stage fright.

It might sound like Our Mother's House as a four adolescent siblings cover up their mother's death to avoided being broken up and sent to different foster homes, but this Spanish thriller mostly passes over its most intriguing element - pretending that their mother is still alive - to instead concentrate on a ghost who may or may not reside in their house, and who may be after revenge. There is a suspenseful sequence early on in which the siblings almost poison an inquisitive local, but it is all downhill from there, capped off with a superfluous silly twist.

A pretty intense thriller, two cops chase a serial killer who has been abducting and murdering young women in a remote Spanish town and disposing of their bodies in the Marshland. The overall plot of this was great - well crafted without going overboard. But the best part of this is the general mood and feel to it - you are constantly reminded of the remoteness and isolation, and hundreds of little choices work together to create a dark and suspenseful mood. Some beautiful scenery (and drone shots, too). Pretty great movie.

Last edited by maxwelldeux on October 4th, 2018, 2:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

2. Ornitólogo (Port 16) - double
Well, this was a treat even if I don't know enuf about Catholicism or Portugal to get a lot of the allusions. Another one where you just have to let it flow. Nature photography worth the price of admission. I correctly indentified a chough and an oystercatcher (unless it was a black stork) but the great crested grebe took some searching. Not what youse wanna hear but then....

This Spanish H.P. Lovecraft adaptation gets off to a solid start with lots of eerie, unexplained mysteriousness (amid spooky locations) and creepy horror effects. Things become far more placid around 40 minutes in as our hero conveniently stumbles across a local who is prepared to spell out exactly what is going on, and the middle section of the film sags. Things pick up well though in the final 25 minutes, which are really very brutal with graphic body maiming and even more horrid-looking locals. It is the ending of the film though that really sells it.

Based on the cover art and fact that both protagonists spend most of their screen time undressed, Room in Room might sound like a softcore movie, but it is actually not erotic for the most part with deep shadows and facial close-ups often obscuring the nether regions of both actresses. Focus is instead placed on dialogue and how both characters eventually open up to each other after each tells their share of white lies. Conceptually, it is certainly intriguing enough stuff, but full of endless talk and chatter, so your mileage might vary.

A black-and-white contemporary silent retelling of Snow White set in 1920s Spain centering around a female bullfighter. There is almost nothing about that sentence that would draw me to the movie, but I liked it - nice style and cinematography and fantastic music that complemented the story.